UDC

130.2-281.9

Authors

Tovbin Kirill Mikhailovich
Branch of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia)

Abstract

The paper looks into today’s Old Belief which has turned from the bearer and reviver of the tradition into an element of post-religiousness by means of informatization, virtualization and lack of ontological background. Mentally and intellectually protesting against the pressure of ideology and sensuality of modernity, Old Believers had to use the intellectual techniques that formed the basis for postmodernity. However, in the 17th through the 20th centuries, these techniques of “naive postmodernism” were compensated by ontological foundations of the natural lifestyle and epistemological foundations of traditional spirituality. Without these mental brakes, destroyed in the USSR – the country of triumphant secularism, – the Old Belief was rapidly virtualizing in the late 20th century and is now being actively involved in mental postmodern collage in the mainstream of popular neo-fundamentalism and pseudotraditionalism. Similar processes occur and are studied in other versions of traditional spirituality, which are successfully revived by Postmodernity, making them trouble-free in order to reach the maximum point of desacralization: turning religion into a game. The author used the methods of the Traditionalist School (R. Guénon, J. Evola, T. Burckhardt, S.H. Nasr, F. Schuon, J. Cutsinger, J. Borella, A. Dugin, etc.). This study applied general reduction of postreligion to the real parameters of the current worldview and mentality of Old Believers, or rather the Old Believers’ reflection in the media (including the Old Believers’ ones) which are now living an independent life in full accordance with the canons of Postmodernity. In addition, the author dwells on two major foundations of Postmodernity: deconstruction and splitting in today’s Old Believers’ worldview, their gradual genesis and modern effect.

Keywords

Old Belief, Orthodoxy, retro-renovationalism, creative interpretation, Young Old Belief, deconstruction, rhizome, Postmodernity, postreligion

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